Friday, September 24, 2010

Long Dry Spell

This is my first post for the month of September.  I took some time off to attend the 30th National Narrow Gauge Convention in St. Charles, Missouri.  We did a few days sightseeing in the St. Louis area and among other things we took a tour of the Anheuser-Busch Brewery and explored Union Station.  Union Station is a truly beautiful structure that covers 42 acres and should not be missed if you are in the area.

After attending the narrow gauge convention which was a real treat as it always is, we were driven by Bill and Donna Weltyk to there home in Downers Grove outside of Chicago.  We spent the next 3 days being shown the sights in and around Chicago.  One of the places we visited was the Illinois Railway Museum which is the largest railway museum in the country.






One of the many engines they had on display was a Union Pacific gas turbine.  I had never seen one of these engines before and I was impressed with how large it is.  The museum has hundreds of engines, freight cars, passenger cars, interurban and street cars, many of which have been restored and can be ridden.





During our tour of Chicago, we visited the Illinois Museum of Science and Industry.  They have a fully restored Zephyr that we were able to tour. Quite a treat for a West Coast guy.  That is my friend Bill on the left standing next to me.  Chicago is a beautiful city and Laurie and I cannot thank Bill and Donna enough for showing us the sites. 
                                                                                                                                          
I have finally gotten back to working on the railroad but do not have a lot of progress to report.  I removed the entire railroad from the garage so my son could spray paint some haze onto the blue sky.
It is very subtle and I'm not even sure that it will be noticeable in a photo but it looks better to me.  I have returned all of the bench work to the garage and this time it is bolted together and attached to the wall.  This makes it very stable and it does not shift around when I am working on it.                              






As you can see in the photo I have hot wired a little more of the scenery behind the upper track and have fastened the pieces of foam together using Liquid Nail for Projects as recommended by Dave Frary in his 
excellent books and DVD's on how to create model railroad scenery.  A must have if you are building a model railroad.  In the bottom of the photo you can see that I have started fastening down track and soldering the feeder wires.  The lower track on the right is part of the lower loop that will be in a tunnel and the track on the left is hidden track to store a train that I may want to run around the loop at times.  Sort of a staging track.  The upper track is the tail end of the upper switchback and has a runaround track so that I can move the engine to the other end of the train.  This is because it is a 5% grade and I always want the engine on the down-hill end of the train.  

Since this railroad represents a backwoods logging and mining operation, I do not want any kind of a formal built up grade or any ballast.  I do, however, need something between the track and the plywood to deaden the sound so I have glued some 1/8" cork down before attaching the track. This should maintain a low profile and allow me to cover most of the ties with dirt to get the look I want.  Next up I plan to weather the rails, put Sculpt-mold over the foam, and paint it.  That should keep me busy for the next week.

 

Saturday, August 28, 2010

Heat Wave

We have been having a heat wave here in the San Joaquin Valley this past week with temperatures of up to 110 for several days.  Needless to say, it has been pretty hot in the garage so I did not get much done out there. Not living in the land of basements puts a real cramp on model railroading in California.  I have a room upstairs that is about the same size as the garage space I am using but when we moved in about 6 years ago I was and still am interested in building and displaying HO dioramas so the room is dedicated to that pasttime.  Someday I will post some photos of what's going on in that room.





I put in some retaining walls on the trestle and started to rough in some scenery.  The emphasis is on rough.  I will be refining it in the future.  Right now I am just searching for what looks right and so far this isn't it.











The only other thing I managed to get done this week is a little more hot wire work on the land forms.  I am just working out some general land forms and hope to pull it all together with some plaster and some rock work.  That and a lot of trees and undergrowth should give the effect I am looking for.

I hope to have more progress to report in the future.

Friday, August 20, 2010

Log Loading Area

I spent some time this week figuring out just where the track was going using flex track instead of ready track.  Not much new to see so I won't post any photos of that end of the railroad.  I did, however, do some work on the log-loading area in the corner next to the garage door.  This area is just beyond the high trestle.




The above photo shows the area I have been working in.  The track that comes in from the left and continues off to the right is the main high line.  The train in the foreground has just crossed the trestle and is headed towards the mine.  At that point the railroad becomes a twin-level railroad and the track on the upper level crosses over the yard area that is on the lower level and proceeds to the mine which is also on an upper level.  The track behind the main holds some skeleton log cars and that is to be the log loading area.  The rear track with the gas mechanical engine is the track that will hold the log loader.  More about that below.  The area directly behind the third track is where the steam powered yarder will sit and will be dragging logs into the site.  There will be trees along the back so you cannot see exactly where the logs are coming from but hopefully will give the illusion that they are being dragged from a point where they well felled, deeper in the forest.






This is a photo of Backwoods Miniatures self-propelled log loader kit.  It uses a Bachmann gas mechanical engine as the donor for the drive mechanism.  That explains the gas mechanical in the first photo.  Hopefully when I build mine it will look like the one in the photo.  Well, close anyway.  The space that I have available in the loading area is not large enough to support a haystack loader or any kind of high line rigging so this is my compromise.  The idea is for the loader to pick up a log, rotate 180 degrees and then run along its track to load the log on an empty car.  This way the log cars do not have to be moved once they are spotted until it is time to head for the log dump at the dock.






Here is an overall shot of the area showing the main line below the log-loading area. This line will pass through a tunnel and exit behind the yard on a little higher level and be traveling through a wooded area.

That's it for this week. Hope to do a little land forming in the area of the high trestle in the coming week.